Latinas face the steepest climb up the corporate ladder — only 1 percent become C-suite executives

Decades before Daisy Auger-Dominguez became one of the few Latina executives in corporate America, she was Daisita , holder of hopes and dreams for a family of immigrants who had sacrificed what they had so their daughter could be more.

Her parents wanted her to become a professional, but there was so much that was unspoken — and unknown — about what it would take to achieve that goal in predominantly White workplaces.

“For many of us, we enter these spaces without a decoder ring,” Auger-Dominguez said. She started her career in the 1990s as a junior analyst at Moody’s, the financial services firm, before rising to be the company’s vice president of diversity a decade later. That was followed by executive positions at Disney, Google, Viacom and VICE Media. She also served on the board of The 19th from 2020 to 2021.

Her journey has often been one of being the “only” Latina in workplaces that could be quietly hostile. Discrimination could range from offhand comments to being passed over for promotions. It was an experience of isolation, Auger-Dominguez said.

For many Latinas, it still is: They are the least represented group at the highest levels of corporate America.

“You realize: ‘They don’t really see me. I was granted access to this space but they don’t really want me to be me . They’re not ready to really accept what that looks like,’” she said.

Those biases mean Latinas have the steepest climb up the corporate ladder. They make up only 5 percent of entry-level workers in corporate jobs and end up as just 1 percent of C-suite executives. It’s a disparity so stark that unless major investments are made, it’s possible Latinas will never catch up to other groups of women, according to a startling new report released Thursday from LeanIn.org . It’s the largest report of its kind.

Since 2015, Lean In, the foundation started by former Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company have been releasing an annual “Women in the Workplace” report that has surveyed more than 450,000 workers at more than 900 companies. The findings about Latinas from the past five years, as well as two dozen in-depth interviews with Latinas across different industries and roles, were put together for the latest analysis — the first time Lean In has studied this group specifically. Auger-Dominguez was among the group interviewed between 2021 and 2024.

According to the foundation, while only 1 percent of C-suite executives are Latinas, White women are 22 percent, White men are 56 percent and men of color are 15 percent. The remaining 6 percent are women of color from all backgrounds, including Latinas.

The pathway to promotion is fraught for Latinas at two key junctures: moving from entry-level to manager positions and advancing from director to vice president. These are known as the “broken rungs” in the corporate ladder, or the points where advancement stops. While many women of color, especially Black women , face a broken rung when trying to become managers, Latinas also face a second obstacle when striving for a vice presidency. For every 100 men promoted to VP, only 90 Latinas are, the lowest rate of any group, Lean In found.

The dismal figures are not for lack of interest. About 71 percent Latinas reported they were interested in becoming senior leaders, compared with 63 percent of women overall. Since the pandemic, Latinas have been returning to the workforce at a clip that has outpaced their counterparts. Before COVID-19, they were already starting businesses at a rate six times higher than other groups, and more recent data suggests the trend has continued .

“It cannot possibly be that a group of talented and skilled and educated Latinas cannot make it to the top,” Auger-Dominguez said. “We do not spend enough time interrogating the system and the obstacles and biases that persist.”

Many Latinas face a vacuum of support when they enter the corporate world — from their managers and their peers. They are often the only Latina on their teams, Lean In found. Latinas are less likely than women overall to report having strong allies in the workplace or to say they felt they had the backing of their manager. They often don’t have a senior leader who advocates for them, or publicly praises their skills.

Instead, Latinas are twice as likely as women overall to hear insults about their culture in the workplace, or face the burden of having to speak on behalf of all people with their same ethnic identity.

Paola Zapata Gonzalez, who works in marketing for John Deere out of the Midwest, said she’s come up against those types of comments from time to time working in a predominantly White company. The comments aren’t necessarily malicious, like: What part of Mexico are you from? (Zapata Gonzalez is Ecuadorian.) Or she may be asked to repeat the pronunciation of her name.

“Why is a Paola so hard?” she’s wondered. “We’ve learned how to say Sigourney.”

The comments do speak to a broader ignorance about the experiences of Latinx people. Zapata Gonzalez recalled struggling to answer a common icebreaker question about hobbies at team events.

“Hobbies aren’t really a thing in Latin America. You go to work, you come home, you watch TV, you spend time with your families,” Zapata Gonzalez said. “So how am I supposed to connect with somebody else?”

It’s something that worries her as she considers her career trajectory in a company whose senior leadership is not very diverse. For four years, she’s been the only Latina on her teams.

Workplace discrimination doesn’t just affect people at one point in time — it shapes careers and livelihoods. Latinas have the largest gender wage gap of any group in the workforce, earning 52 cents for every $1 White, non-Latino men earn. Much of the pay gap is attributed to Latinas being concentrated in jobs with lower pay, because the figure is a comparison of the median wage for all Latinas and the median wage for all White, non-Latino men. But even in higher-earning fields , Latinas still face a pay gap because they are less likely to be in the most senior positions. In management, business and finance, Latinas earn 64 cents compared with every $1 a White, non-Latino man earns.

Without better data collection on hiring, promotion and attrition in corporate positions, it’ll be impossible to know if attempts to address the problem are taking off. Between 2015 and 2023, when Lean In first started studying women in the workplace, there was a 65 percent increase in the number of women in C-suite positions. Data disaggregated by gender and race is the next step, the report authors wrote, so that problems that are specific to different groups can be targeted.

“If you don’t know how Latinas are moving through your pipeline … then you just don’t have visibility into where the weak spots are in your processes and programs. And then, of course, it makes it hard to imagine how you’re going to effectively fix them or address them,” said Lean In CEO Rachel Thomas. “Information is power.”

Thomas said the organization plans to keep ramping up its analysis, with more reports that will look at different groups of women of color. The first of its kind, on Black women, was published in 2020 .

Over the past several years, states and localities have been rapidly passing pay transparency laws that attempt to address how inequities in one job have followed marginalized groups to the next one. These laws have made it illegal to ask workers what they were previously paid and have created new mechanisms for posting salaries more publicly. As of March 2023, 18 states had passed pay transparency laws, the Department of Labor reported.

Training for managers in diversity equity and inclusion (DEI), as well as efforts to include Latinas in high-level meetings and social gatherings, could help build trust in a corporate environment that has often been inhospitable, the report’s authors argued. Higher-level managers should be held accountable for helping employees advance, they wrote.

Auger-Dominguez said she was able to reach the highest levels of the corporate world because she had mentors who campaigned on her behalf. “I have the career I have because I had direct managers or other leaders in organizations who saw something in me that I didn’t see and who knew how to navigate spaces that I didn’t know how to navigate,” she said.

Across the country, however, DEI programs have been under fire for years, cast by opponents as discrimination against White people and men. Supporters see them as a way to correct generations of discrimination that have shut people of color out of career advancement. Still, thousands of DEI jobs have been slashed , particularly on college campuses following a Supreme Court ruling last summer that ended affirmative action , the practice of considering race, gender or disability status in the admissions or job application processes .

“There is tremendous pushback against it, and organizations are rethinking and they are rebranding in many cases — but I could care less what you call it,” said Auger-Dominguez, who has worked in a range of human resources positions. She just wants companies to focus on addressing gaps and obstacles for workers of diverse backgrounds.

Ultimately businesses cannot afford to alienate groups in an increasingly diverse world, she said.

“I’m seeing [DEI] alive and well in so many organizations,” she said. “The workforce, increasingly, will not go to organizations that are outright hostile to them. So for those who are struggling with finding enough talent, guess what? You better make sure that you have an inclusive practice for hiring and promoting and advancing your talent — because they will go elsewhere.”